Spring 2021 garden Blog
What's New?
Well first off Meme got her new Spring Outfit and she is looking good! She is COVID compliant and because she never leaves her spot, has no intentions of getting vaccinated.
We are busy here with seed germination for our veggie gardens. I am on my second batch which will finish up the indoor propagation of veggies and I will use the remaining seeds for direct sewing in June and then secession plantings through out the season.
Year ago I started putting in plants around the outsides of the raised beds in order to have a garden that is teaming with pollinators all year long. That way when my veggies are in and starting to flower, there are pollinators already there. I also wanted to have a garden that is beautiful all year round, not just when the beds are full. Well It has come to fruition. The garden is teaming with life and is a flowering jungle. Now I have to keep it trimmed up. I recently went through and cut back things that were encroaching on my path ways. It is important to keep relatively wide paths throughout the garden and the entire property for that matter, as the rattlesnakes will be out soon. I need to be able to see all around my raised beds and use caution at all times during snake season. So I do the work early in the Spring while it is still too cool for snakes to be out and active. It is so nice to be out working in the cool temperatures. the ground is nice and soft due to the organic material we have added year after year and the winters moisture.
MeMe
As soon as the veggies seedlings are off the heating mats it will be time to get back to native plant propagation. I will be starting things from seed and from cuttings taken from my plants on the property. The plants that I installed last Fall are doing amazing and I think out of more then seventy plants, I only lost three or four. I also had very good sucess with the cuttings I stuck last year and moderate sucess with the Rhamnus crocea seeds I propagated. I had about fifty percent sucess so far. I hear the seedlings have to make it through the first summer before they are out of the woods. Lots of good results and I am looking forward to continuing again this year. I am hopeful that in the Spring of 2022, we can have our first tour of the Fire Safe Demonstration Garden here on Black Swan Ranch. By then the plants should have a considerable amount of growth on them . Hopefully COVID will be less of a threat and there won't be any more New Castle out breaks in San Diego. Our fingers are crossed and I know eventually we will be able to have our first invitational tour here at Black Swan Ranch. It is intended to be an educational event about landscaping with fire wise native plants, I think it will also be fun as we have the goats and chickens for people to get acquainted with. This is something I am working towards and I look forward to being able to do.